The Logic Behind Apocalypse

My next two posts have to deal with the Global Warming article Lars had analyzed earlier. This first post will deal with the logical strengths and advantages of this article written by James Lovelock of the United Kingdom.

It is pretty safe to assume that most, if not all, educated people have heard of the issue of global warming. It usually carries a negative connotation, and Lovelock's writing is no exception. Compared to most arguments, however, Lovelock has strong factual backing, but sadly fails to refer to their sources.

Right off the bat, Lovelock refers to a prominent figure Sir David King, the UK's chief scientist, predicting the gravity of global warming on the world. At that time, he remarks that King's prediction did not draw a large amount of attention, but Lovelock continues to show evidence of a worsening climate. One such involved a heat spell in Europe during the summer of 2003. Nearly 20,000 people died of heat-related incidents. Some claimed this just a "deviation from the norm" (Par. 5), although Lovelock points out that climatologists of the time predicted this degree of deviation had a 1-out-of-300,000 chance of occurring.

To support his claim even more, Lovelock reports predictions that by 2100 A.D., the global temperature will rise 6 degrees-Celsius. In order to identify the magnitude of this change of temperature, the author shows that it would raise the sea level by seven meters -- enough to sink cities such as Venice, London, New York, Tokyo, and half of southern Florida.

As you can see, Lovelock’s article leans heavily on facts, because without them, no one would see reason to change. The data presented is very convincing, but at some times, the numbers make the reader think whether or not they are exaggerated. In a normal situation, a curious reader would follow the author’s references to read for themselves what exactly the data represents. Unfortunately, Lovelock has no references. For all we know, he could be making up the values just to scare us. Without citations, all of Lovelock’s argument is just convincing facts and not necessarily true facts.

James Lovelock's article contains an immense amount of support from recent research, studies, and other scientific reports – none of which we can verify. According to the stated information, awareness and action on global warming has increased over the years, but Lovelock does not think this will be enough to save the planet. By Lovelock's article, it is easy to understand why he thinks that nuclear power is the only way to save the world. He suggests that we don't have time to experiment with alternative energies, and that we already have a good, clean, and green solution to global warming -- nuclear energy.